Glenn Foundation Awards Buck Institute $1 Million to Establish Training Fellowships in the Biology of Aging

June 15, 2012 Novato, California The Buck Institute has received $1 million to create Glenn Foundation Research Training Fellowships in the Biology of Aging. The monies will bring new postdoctoral fellows to the Buck Institute, funding two years of research for each of 10 scientists.

Postdoctoral fellows are generally young scientists who have completed their MD or PhD degrees. They do independent scientific research under the mentorship of a faculty member with the aim of eventually establishing their own laboratories based on their areas of expertise. The Buck Institute currently has 65 postdoctoral fellows on staff. “The Buck Institute has an excellent track record of training and preparing leading researchers in the mechanisms of biological aging and their relationship to chronic disease,” said Mark Collins, President of the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research. “Our founder, Paul F. Glenn, has a long history of providing support to the Buck Institute and its scientists. We are delighted to continue this support via the establishment of these training fellowships.”

“We are very grateful to the Glenn Foundation for recognizing the key role postdoctoral fellows play in furthering research aimed at preventing or delaying the diseases associated with growing older,” said Buck Institute CEO Brian K. Kennedy, PhD, who will be the Program Director for the training fellowships. “The Institute is in an expansion mode at a time when the field of aging research is making rapid progress toward being able to impact the health of individuals. Funding these new postdocs helps fuel this expansion."

The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research supports research to understand the biology that governs normal aging and its related decline with the objective of developing interventions that will delay its progress and thereby extend the healthy years of human life.

About the Buck Institute for Research on AgingThe Buck Institute is the U.S.’s first and foremost independent research organization devoted to Geroscience, focused on the connection between normal aging and chronic disease. Based in Novato, California, the Buck is dedicated to extending “Healthspan,” the healthy years of human life, and does so by utilizing a unique interdisciplinary approach involving laboratories studying the mechanisms of aging and others focused on specific diseases. Buck scientists strive to discover new ways of detecting, preventing and treating age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, cancer, cardiovascular disease, macular degeneration, diabetes and stroke. In their collaborative research, they are supported by the most recent developments in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics. For more information: www.thebuck.org.